At UMBC, microcredentials are designed to do more than recognize learning — they make career-ready skills visible. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) connects higher education and employers around a shared definition of career readiness, and every UMBC microcredential aligns to at least one NACE Career Readiness Competency.
Career readiness is the foundation for the competencies that prepare college-educated learners for success in the workplace and in their long-term career growth — it’s the new career currency. By embedding NACE competencies into microcredentials, UMBC helps you clearly communicate how your knowledge and experience translate into workforce-ready skills.
Why this matters for your microcredential
Signals workforce relevance
Aligning microcredentials to NACE competencies ensures each credential reflects skills and abilities employers already recognize and value.
Helps you tell your story
You can use NACE language to describe what you can do — not just what you studied — making your skills easier to talk about on resumes, LinkedIn, in interviews, and in performance reviews.
Connects learning to career pathways
Whether your learning happened in a course, an internship, a research experience, or a co-curricular activity, NACE competencies help bridge academic experience with real-world application.
Provides a shared framework
NACE gives higher education and employers a common language for defining, developing, and assessing career readiness across disciplines and industries.
The eight NACE Career Readiness Competencies
UMBC microcredentials may align with one or more of the following:
- Career & Self-Development — proactively developing yourself through continual learning, self-awareness, career navigation, and networking
- Communication — clearly and effectively exchanging information, ideas, facts, and perspectives
- Critical Thinking — identifying and responding to needs using analysis, reasoning, and situational understanding
- Equity & Inclusion — engaging people from diverse backgrounds with awareness, respect, and inclusive practices
- Leadership — recognizing and leveraging individual and team strengths to achieve goals
- Professionalism — demonstrating effective work habits and acting in the interest of the broader community and workplace
- Teamwork — building collaborative relationships and working toward shared goals
- Technology — ethically using and adapting technologies to accomplish tasks and improve outcomes
Learn more about the NACE Career Readiness Competencies ↗
When you earn a UMBC microcredential, you’re not just demonstrating subject knowledge — you’re showing evidence of career-ready competencies that translate beyond the university. Every microcredential includes clearly defined learning outcomes, assessments aligned to those outcomes, and explicit mapping to one or more NACE Career Readiness Competencies, making your learning visible, portable, and meaningful to employers, graduate programs, and professional networks.